Tuesday, August 1, 2023

Robert Charles Branden on the Influence of Zechariah 3:1-2 on the Demonology of the Apocalypse of Zephaniah

 Chapter 4 of the Apocalypse of Zephaniah (c. 1st c. BC-AD 1st c.), reads thusly:

 

1 Then I walked with the angel of the Lord. I looked before me and I saw a place there. 2 [Thousands] of thousands and myriads of myriads of an[gels] entered through [it]. 3 Their faces were like a leopar[d], their tusks being outside their mouth [like] the wild boars. 4 Their eyes were mixed with blood. Their hair was loose like the hair of women, and fiery scourges were in their hands. 5 When I saw them, I was afraid. I said to that angel who walked with me, “Of what sort are these?” 6 He said to me, “These are the servants of all creation who come to the souls of ungodly men and bring them and leave them in this place. 7 They spend three days going around with them in the air before they bring them and cast them into their eternal punishment.” 8 I said, “I beseech you, O Lord, don’t give them authority to come to me.” 9 The angel said, “Don’t fea[r], I will not permit them to come to [you] because you are pure before the Lord. I will not permit them to come to you because the Lord Almighty sent me to you because ‹you› are pure before him.” 10 Then he beckoned to them, and they withdrew themselves and they ran from me. (OTP 1:511)

 

Chapter 6 of the same work reads:

 

1 Again I turned back and walked, and I saw a great sea. 2 But I thought that it was a sea of water. I discovered that it was entirely a sea of flame like a slime which casts forth much flame and whose waves burn sulfur and bitumen. 3 They began to approach me. 4 Then I thought that the Lord Almighty had come to visit me. 5 Then when I saw, I fell upon my face before him in order that I might worship him. 6 I was very much afraid, and I entreated him that he might save me from this distress. 7 I cried out, saying, “Eloe, Lord, Adonai, Sabaoth, I beseech you to save me from this distress because it has befallen me.” 8 That same instant I stood up, and I saw a great angel before me. His hair was spread out like the lionesses’. His teeth were outside his mouth like a bear. His hair was spread out like women’s. His body was like the serpent’s when he wished to swallow me. 9 And when I saw him, I was afraid of him so that all of my parts of my body were loosened and I fell upon my face. 10 I was unable to stand, and I prayed before the Lord Almighty, “You will save me from this distress. You are the one who saved Israel from the hand of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. You saved Susanna from the hand of the elders of injustice. You saved the three holy men, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, from the furnace of burning fire. I beg you to save me from this distress.” 11 Then I arose and stood, and I saw a great angel standing before me with his face shining like the rays of the sun in its glory since his face is like that which is perfected in its glory. 12 And he was girded as if a golden girdle were upon his breast. His feet were like bronze which is melted in a fire. 1 And when I saw him, I rejoiced, for I thought that the Lord Almighty had come to visit me. 14 I fell upon my face, and I worshiped him. 15 He said to me, “Take heed. Don’t worship me. I am not the Lord Almighty, but I am the great angel, Eremiel, who is over the abyss and Hades, the one in which all of the souls are imprisoned from the end of the Flood, which came upon the earth, until this day.” 16 Then I inquired of the angel, “What is the place to which I have come?” He said to me, “It is Hades.” 17 Then I asked him, “Who is the great angel who stands thus, whom I saw?” He said, “This is the one who accuses men in the presence of the Lord.” (OTP 1:512-13)

 

Commenting on the demonology of this text, Robert Charles Branden noted that

 

The canonical book of Zechariah greatly influenced the Apocalypse of Zephaniah. The author of the Apocalypse of Zephaniah portrays two classes of angels. One class is beastly (4) and one is noble (6:11-15). With the accuser of Zech. 3:1-2 providing the background, the role of the beastly angels is to accuse mankind and one is singled out as the great angel and particularly beastly (6:1-10, 16-17). This does not prove that the New Testament Satan is what is pictured in Zechariah, but it does show how the adversary in Zech 3:1-2 began to be read as referring to a particular angel who was particularly beastly. (Robert Charles Branden, Satanic Conflict and the Plot of Matthew [Studies in Biblical Literature 89; New York: Peter Lang, 2006], 23, emphasis added)